Discomfort ≠ Inequity: Not everything is inequity, but everything can be done inequitably
The world of work is a really weird place.
You could have strong relationships with people you work with, and yet never spend time with them outside of work. You could think highly of a co-workers personality and not love the quality of their work. You could actively put in time, resources and effort into creating the best possible work environments, and also have people who just don’t want to work with you.
These, and all aspects of work are riddled with what feel like conflicting truths, and those conflicting truths can be really stressful when they play out. From tough performance assessments, layoffs, terminations, identifying gaps and prickly clients relationships - these can all feel really tough and awful. These scenarios are what we want to focus on because sometimes bad things happen, sometimes they happen because of structural inequity, oppression and violence, and sometimes they just happen.
In 2020, public discourse grew about the way structural inequity seeps into every aspect of our lives. A lot of you began to do the difficult but necessary work of understanding how historical and contemporary oppression shaped your workplaces. In the midst of that incredible work however, some nuance has been lost - and this work is all about nuance.
In an effort to inject workplaces with the kind of equitable systems that we at QuakeLab champion, those who are doing the work have become scared and dismissive of the hard things that are normal and ok in the workplace. This does not mean that we rid ourselves of the critical analysis of our workplaces that ensures that even when we are doing the hard things, they are done equitably. Rather it means that we must be solid enough in our efforts for justice and equity to understand that there is a difference.
Ok, so far everything you’ve read has maybe felt really cryptic - let’s get specific.
Terminations and lay-offs
We’ll rip the bandaid off and start with a really hard one. Terminations and lay-offs are a fact of work. Sometimes we see them happen in droves and sometimes they are focused on individuals.
Terminations and lay-offs can be ripe playing ground for inequity to run unchecked and for discrimination to shine. Since 2021, there have been a number of mass lay-offs in the tech world, an analysis of publicly available data for 2022 showed that Black and Latino workers were disproportionately affected during tech layoffs in 2022. During the height of COVID 19 lay-offs, women accounted for 53% of the year-over-year employment losses. So it’s no secret, structural inequity plays a part in layoffs, even when they are industry wide, prompted by the economy, or company wide. At a smaller scale, individual terminations are not immune to the same kinds of inequity. All of the stereotypes and violent ideas at play about Black women being aggressive or difficult to work with, infantilization of Asian women, and dismissiveness of disabled people, comes into play when a person is being considered for termination.
And yet, with all that in mind, sometimes terminations happen, sometimes lay-offs happen, and although they can be informed and exasperated by inequity, they are not inherently inequitable. Making that distinction means that we can expect excellence from the people we work with, while critically analyzing the systems we work within.
Social movement strategist Maurice Mitchell wrote “If everything is “violent,” nothing really is. If every slight is “oppression,” nothing is.” He wrote this while discussing the fallacy of being unable to interpret the scale of a problem and conflating discomfort with oppression or violence.
The inability to fairly and adequately assess the quality of a person’s work because of their identity leans into the oppressive systems that encourages us to dehumanize individuals and treat them as less than. Black people, Indigenous peoples, disabled people, elderly people, all people are capable of doing excellent work in your organization and sometimes their time with you will be short for reasons divorced from systemic oppression or their identity.
There are serious opportunities to redesign how we approach these difficult moments that includes ensuring a person’s livelihood isn’t disrupted, ensuring every effort is made to avoid discarding people rather than supporting and investing in their growth, and building the necessary stop gaps to ensure the legal parameters we must work within aren’t weaponized against marginalized people. Here’s what that can look like:
If you are an organization who has recently taken on diversification efforts, but find yourself in a season of lay-offs, ensure you’re cognizant that a ‘last in, first out’ policy will affect the marginalized people you just hired.
If you suspect you will need to perform some lay-offs, give your team ample notice and support for transition. This might include ensuring they have strong recommendation letters and all necessary information and documentation they need is accessible.
Lay-offs and terminations have strict legal requirements and consequences, however remember that the justice system is not always equitable, it will force all parties to take steps that may not be in line with your DEI values, so ensure that all efforts are made to avoid this.
Extend support where appropriate and within reason, give employees the opportunity to trade personal contact information and be appreciated for their efforts. Remember, we spend a lot of time at work, and build really valuable relationships, these should be respected.
We say the above knowing it’s not always straightforward, and mistakes will be made along the way by everyone - including us!
Performance assessments
We’ve talked about performance management exhaustively, so if you want to take a deep dive into why performance management is an equity issue, we highly recommend checking out this read.
One thing we haven’t touched on too much is how rough performance assessments can be. Should you take the steps to build a truly inclusive and equitable process for assessing a person’s performance, the actual moment when you have to give difficult feedback never feels great for anyone involved. That icky moment doesn’t have to last forever, a focus on constructive feedback, grounded in the agreed upon job description, goals and tasks allows for all parties to move from “ouch that felt rough” to “ok, here’s the plan, here’s where we go from here”. These feelings of hurt, disappointment, and the sadness of not meeting expectations can be destabilizing for a second - but it is not necessarily inequity.
The conflation of inequity and discomfort around giving feedback and constructive criticism sets a dangerous precedent and we start to see the emergence of a phenomenon Dr. David A refers to as “protective hesitation”. This is when a leader avoids providing constructive criticism to an employee out of the fear of being perceived as racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, etc. The problem is that this can do more harm than good for employees' by obscuring critical growth opportunities, job assignments, higher pay, and promotions. Already, women, racialized folks and marginalized people have to navigate low quality feedback in weak performance management systems, so muddying what could be an excellent opportunity for growth and career mobility with misunderstanding the difference between discomfort and inequity, makes the situation worse.
Tough work, boring work, lots of work
Lastly we want to touch on the nature of most work, sometimes. We’ve all heard the phrase “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” We hate to make accusations, but whoever said that, probably lied a tiny bit. Regardless of how passionate and excited you are about the work you do, all work includes the mundane, the boring, the tiring and overwhelming bits. Whether it's long stints reading and writing, administrative work, or having to navigate different personalities and feelings, sometimes work just doesn’t feel great.
To be clear, we are not referring to overwork, under resourcing or under compensating people. This is where inequity starts to emerge in racial discrepancies around pay, women being forced to take on glue work (un-promotable work), and the exhaustion faced by mostly racialized, immigrant women in the nonprofit and charity sectors. However, moments or days or weeks when work feels heavy, especially when it is not the norm but rather the exception, should be treated as such.
Once again, doing equity and justice work in a way that is rigorous, intentional and actionable means doing the heavy lifting of discerning what your equity challenges are, the ways they are emerging in process, policy and procedure (structures), and who they most affect or affect differently. This rigor also allows for space to differentiate discomfort and inequity.
To once again lean on the words of Maurice Mitchell, “Workplaces can provide a salary, benefits, paid time off, and other resources to help individuals access the support and care they require. Workplaces can also promote a culture of care and encourage individuals to care for themselves. Workplaces and colleagues cannot replace medical professionals, spiritual supports, or other devoted spaces of care. This is also true for non-professional spaces. Your comrades can provide support, foster a caring environment, or help you out when you’re in distress. They cannot heal you or salve long-standing traumas. It is natural for us to turn to those closest when we’re in pain. It is an indictment of the larger systems in our society that abundant mental health and healing resources are not available to most of us.”
Want to talk through building equity in tough times and ensuring you have a clear understanding about what equity is and isn't, shoot us an email!